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According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "the separation of church and state does not require division between belief and public action, between moral principles and political choices, but protects the right of believers and religious groups to practice their faith and act on their values in public life."[1]

As a program and a movement, political Catholicism - a political and cultural conception which promotes the ideas and social teaching of the Catholic Church (Catholic social teaching) in public life through government action - was started by Prussian Catholics in the second half of the 19th century, as a response to secular social concepts. The main reason were the measures by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to limit the influence of Catholic Church, first in Prussia, and then in united Germany. That struggle is known in history as the Kulturkampf.

From Germany, political Catholic social movements spread in Austria-Hungary, especially in today's Austria, Ukraine, Slovenia and Croatia. Catholic Action was the name of many groups of lay Catholics who were attempting to encourage a Catholic influence on political society.

After the 1891 encyclicalRerum novarum(Of New Things) by Pope Leo XIII, political Catholic movements got a new impulse for development, and they spread the area of their involvement. With this encyclical, the Catholic Church expanded its interest in social, economical, political and cultural issues, and it called for a drastic conversion of Western society in the 19th century in the face of capitalist influences. Following the release of the document, the labour movement which had previously floundered began to flourish in Europe and later in North America. Catholic believers, both lay and clergy alike, had a desire for active social and political engagement in order to deal with acute social problems according to Catholic Christian principles, as opposed to a purely secular approach.[citation needed] For example, Mary Harris Jones, better known as "Mother Jones", and the National Catholic Welfare Council were central in the campaign to end child labour in the United States during the early 20th century.

In the 20th century, Catholic political movements became very strong in Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Ireland, France and Latin America. What these movements had in common was a defense of the acquired rights of the Catholic Church (attacked by anticlerical politicians) and a defense of Christian faith and moral values (threatened by increasing secularization). Members of opposing schools of thought called such attempts clericalism.

These Catholic movements developed various forms of Christian democratic ideology, generally promoting a morally and socially conservative agenda whilst supporting a middle ground third way between unrestrained capitalism and state socialism. Freemasons were seen mainly as enemies and vehement opponents of political Catholicism. A special situation occurred in Mexico, where an atheistic president ruled in the 1920s and oppressed the Church and Catholics. This led to the open Christian revolution of 1926 to 1929, known as the Cristero War.

Until the Second Vatican Council, the Church did not always accept the model of modern democracy and its expansion into social and economic realms because it was wary of anticlerical socialistic tendencies. When Catholic social activists were perceived to be too extreme in social conflicts, the Church hierarchy tried to stop their excesses; occasions of this included the Worker-priest movement in France in the 1940s and 1950s, and liberation theology in Latin America in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. But some movements were strongly supported by the Church - in Australia the Catholic Social Studies Movement during the 1940s and 1950s, from which the National Civic Council has developed.

In recent times, after the Second World War, Christian engagement in politics became weaker and even "Demo-Christian" parties by name lost some of their Christianity. Stronger Christian involvement in Europe on the beginning of the 21st century has produced some new small parties, for example those joined in the European Christian Political Movement. According to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, part of the younger generation of Catholics are now showing a renewed interest in forms of political Catholicism such as a revived Catholic Integralism or Tradinista! socialism.[3]